Jill's Journal: 'Survivor' is a guilty pleasure for this couch potato
By:
Jill Meier, Journal editor
Tonight, one of my guilty pleasures in life begins yet another journey on a remote island somewhere in the tropics.
Yep, that’s right, it’s Survivor time!
This season marks the 40th season of the reality show, and rest assured, I’ve been front and center of a television screen for each and every episode.
I get it, that’s a lot of hours in my lifetime that I can never get back. But I’m OK with that. Like I said, it’s a guilty pleasure, and if that’s as much of a rebel as I am, we’re all going to, well, survive. I guess you could say that Survivor is simply a guilty pleasure for this couch potato.
When Survivor first came on the air, I well remember encouraging my folks to give the show a try. But they weren’t biting on what I was encouraging them to do. If I remember right, mom told me that she couldn’t understand what drew an educated person such as myself to a show where they eat bugs to sustain themselves.
As a wise-cracking 30-something then, I let her know that there was more to the show than bugs for breakfast, lunch and supper. There’s lying, cheating and stealing – and who among us doesn’t enjoy sitting back and watching the chair be pulled from under someone else?
After all, the show’s theme is “Outwit, outlast, and outplay.”
Fast-forward a few years, and my mom was finally tuning in to the show on a weekly basis. She even kept a log of the contestants, crossing off their names each week as they were voted off the island by their Survivormates.
This season, titled, Winners at War, will feature 20 previous winners coming back to earn the title of Sole Survivor once more. I fully anticipate this season to be a real doozy.
There will be arguments, secrets revealed, hidden immunity idols found and of course, some of the show’s signature back-stabbing. Just when you think they’ve got it all figure out, someone goes and upsets the ol’ apple cart, and who among us doesn’t enjoy sitting back and watching the apples roll all over the floor.
As always, I anticipate the show’s producers and writers will throw in plenty of twists, which seems only fitting since this time, the contestants will take aim at being the last man – or woman – standing, as the winner stands to take home a healthy $2 million prize, the largest prize money of all 40 seasons.
As much as I enjoy my Wednesday night hour of Survivor, I know I surely wouldn’t last long in that environment. Sure, I love the tropics, sand and sun and blue skies like the rest of you, but sleeping on hard bamboo poles, sometimes in torrential downpours and strong winds isn’t my cup of tea. I honestly enjoy a hot shower, a warm meal, a good night’s rest in the comforts of my cushy and warm bed, not to mention my Wednesday night couch-potato sessions in front of a television watching Survivor.
